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Actually worldwide oil usage peaked in 2005 and has been gyrating around that level ever since. About half the months since then have seen decreases and half increases, so it's not a long way off. It's almost a decade ago.

Eventually heroic measures will start to fail and usage will be dropping every month for the next century as the oil fields slowly dry up.



It's not just that. Investment projects to increase oil output are having costs going through the roof :

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230327770... (just an example)

But it's not just that EREOI in Saudi Arabian oil is projected to be at most 10 currently (down from > 30). While that's not that serious, it is decreasing exponentially and a value of < 5 would be catastrophic. Most other projects are far worse off.

(Why ? At EREOI of 10 you have to "waste" 11% of oil, up from 4% at 30. However at 5, the factor becomes 25%, at 4 it's 33%, at 3 it's 51%, at 2 it's 100%), note that current total reseve oil output is 2% at best, and minimum depletion rates are 7%.

Here's the net problem : the world will run out of oil in 6 months - 12 months. The US has a stay of execution though, but not for long : 2-3 years at most, and the US will need to implement protectionist measures to keep oil at a reasonable rate. Given what happened every other time we have a few percent drop in oil availability, I'm expecting a total stock crash and a new crisis by the end of the year.




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